A journey by car to the Earth's edge

 A journey by car to the Earth's edge

Caleta Eugenia is the southernmost point in Chile that may be reached by car. It is only home to two people and is located about 1,000 kilometers north of Antarctica.

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The gravel road ended when I got to Caleta Eugenia, turning into a rocky trail that wound its way through a stretch of grass scattered with dilapidated vehicles and abandoned agricultural equipment, eventually ending at a pebble beach that coiled like a comma along the Beagle Channel coast.

When we parked, no one was there to welcome me, but a shaggy border collie rushed joyfully over from a run-down farmstead, its corrugated iron roof rattling in the typically strong winds of Tierra del Fuego. A developing storm in the Drake Passage to the south caused three fishing boats to bob offshore in their quest for the valuable king crabs, which can grow to a maximum length of 1.5 meters from tip to tip. Merely a thousand kilometers north of Antarctica, the late afternoon temperature had left my gloved fingers numb. I had really arrived at the end of the road. The furthest south in Chile you can drive is Caleta Eugenia, a desolate navy ranch.

My journey began 23 km to the west at Puerto Williams, a 2,000-person community in the shadow of the powerful Dientes de Navarino, a series of snow-streaked Andean peaks that like fangs. Located on Isla Navarino in southern Tierra del Fuego, a sparsely inhabited island split between Chile and Argentina and located south of Patagonia across the Strait of Magellan, Puerto Williams was established as a naval outpost in the 1950s. The little port is more over 2,400 kilometers to the south of Santiago, the capital of Chile; that's about the same distance from London to Istanbul.

Puerto Williams was able to unseat its much bigger Argentine competitor Ushuaia, which is located on the other side of the Beagle Channel, as the world's southernmost city after the Chilean government elevated Puerto Williams's status from town in 2019 in a cunning attempt to increase tourism. The capital of Chile's Antarctic region, despite its recent rebranding, has the appearance and atmosphere of a little town; people leave their doors unlocked, and horses and cows wander the peaceful streets. The fact that it is only reachable by boat or aircraft and lacks road links with Chilean Patagonia contributes to its allure for the few tourists who make the trip thus far south.

This is a unique location where you can really experience solitude," writer Perla Bolla, proprietor of Jardín Fuegia, an exquisite store next to the pier offering handmade rhubarb-and-ginger jam jars, books, prints, and plants, stated. "You can walk for miles and miles and not see anyone."

This is a unique location where you can really sense the solitude. You won't see anybody if you go for kilometers on end.

Nevertheless, Puerto Williams is growing quickly despite its isolation: a sizable socio-ecological research center has been opened, and a contemporary pier is being constructed to accommodate bigger Antarctic cruise ships.

Finding the right person to take me to Caleta Eugenia gave me an amazing insight into the turbulent history of this remote area, after I had spent a few days touring Puerto Williams, trekking to a mountain viewpoint, and indulging in delicious king crab gratin. Maurice Van de Maele, the owner of my guesthouse, turned out to be an anthropologist, polar guide, former head of the city's museum, and leader of the local tourist organization, as I learned during breakfast.

He took me for a drive down the Y-905 on the last day of my three-day stay. down the way, we passed a neighborhood of identical navy residences with white picket fences, a scattering of erroneous one- and two-story civilian homes, a weathered A-frame church, and a few basic businesses and restaurants. "You're at the end of the world" was written on a sign in a guesthouse garden.

Near the hamlet of Villa Ukika, which is inhabited by about fifty Indigenous Yagán people, the paved road came to an end. For thousands of years, their ancestors in southern Tierra del Fuego lived as nomadic, canoe-based communities. However, during the colonization of the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were destroyed by violence, illness, and relocation. The Yagán community, long disregarded by the Chilean government, was instrumental in a well-publicized campaign against a contentious proposal to establish a large fish farm close to Puerto Williams in 2019. The hamlet received more attention when a local woman, Lidia González Calderón, a former city council member, was chosen to represent the Yagán people in a national citizens' assembly charged with creating a new Chilean constitution two years later.

Past Villa Ukika, the Y-905—now only a gravel road—hugged along the edge of the Beagle Channel, named after the ship naturalist Charles Darwin traveled on his historic 1831–1836 circumnavigation of South America. We passed a succession of desolate bays, coves, headlands, and beaches by following an undulating road across low hills topped with wind-sculpted trees covered in a wispy lichen known as Old Man's Beard. Other than the occasional farm or fisherman's house and a few of turkey vultures swooping above, there were no other cars and not many indications of human habitation.

Van de Maele made many stops along the road to point out historical landmarks to me that I may have missed otherwise. Numerous middens, or substantial mounds of mollusk shells left behind by Indigenous Yagán families thousands of years ago, could be seen, as well as bowl-shaped depressions that previously served as protection from the severe weather in the area. Now that they were covered with grass, they seemed to an inexperienced eye to be organic elements of the surroundings. We also discovered the remnants of prehistoric fishing nets, which were cleverly constructed rows of stones that crossed little inlets to admit fish in at high tide but keep them out during low tide.

"This area is one of the top destinations in the world for archaeological density," Van de Maele said. Just a third of Isla Navarino has been revealed to have around 750 [ancient] Yagán sites. The whole island is likely home to 2,000 sites. The oldest dates back around 7,500 years." Due to its distant location, difficult transportation, and unpredictable climate, Tierra del Fuego is home to very few archaeological projects despite its rich history. Van de Maele observed, "The logistics just eat up the budget."

Driving forward, we saw near-gale-force winds whipping the Beagle Channel's surface into white peaks that mirrored the range of mountains on the Argentine side of the canal. Evergreen beech woods with Chilean fire shrubs with crimson flowers were scattered over the inland areas. Occasionally, there were even areas of complete destruction, with smashed branches and fallen trunks that had lost their bark. They seemed to have been affected by a natural calamity. According to Van de Maele, some of them had the distinctive char of fires started to make way for cultivation and grazing, while others had a more surprising cause: beavers.

The Argentine government foolishly sent a tiny colony of Canadian beavers to their region of Tierra del Fuego in the 1940s in an attempt to grow a fur trade, which had terrible results. Due to the lack of natural predators in the area, the enterprise failed to take off, and the rats soon expanded over the area. With their current population of around 200,000, beavers are said to have harmed 25% of Tierra del Fuego's forest ecosystems.

Van de Maele indicated a former military bunker close by that faced the waterfront. It was a remnant of the 1978 boundary dispute that almost took Argentina and Chile to war over three uninhabited islands east of Isla Navarino: Picton, Lennox, and Nueva. Pope John Paul II's intercession managed to settle the conflict amicably in the end, despite concerns of an invasion, and the islands are still a part of Chile.

We arrived at Caleta Eugenia, the terminus of the Y-905, after an hour. The ranch is inhabited by a father and son who raise cattle and sell wood while serving as caregivers for the navy. The father led a chestnut horse out to graze and came out of the ramshackle farmhouse to talk with us as we strolled down the beach, watching the channel for cormorants and petrels.

With the late afternoon sun shining down on it, Caleta Eugenia seemed like an appropriate spot to conclude my quest, but this may not be the last point of no return. There are plans to extend the Y-905 another 20 km or more to the little community of Puerto Toro, which is now only accessible by boat and is home to king crab fishermen. Puerto Toro is the southernmost village on Earth. Furthermore, it could be incorrect to consider the ranch as a destination in the slightest. From the viewpoint of the southern hemisphere, it may as well be the beginning.